


Driving

by Darth_Nonie



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Souled Vampire(s), Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-04-25
Updated: 2001-04-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darth_Nonie/pseuds/Darth_Nonie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS: Takes place right after “Dead End,” wherein Lindsey was given an Evil Hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving

“Don’t drive too fast, now. Lot of cops out there.” Angel’s voice was almost affectionate.

Lindsey nodded wordlessly and stepped up into the driver’s seat, feeling the car fit around him like home, like an old skin closer to him than his suit ever was.

Leaving it all behind. All the crap, all the Lindsey-self wasted on ambition and the false coin of rivalry. His foot, God, it just slammed on the gas like a good hard fuck and he was OUT. Of. There.

But that wasn’t his engine rumbling, unless the Black Suits had been playing little games with it. No, wait--

A convertible pulling up next to him, even at this speed. Angel, manic grin, playing street races like the guys he’d known back home. Juvenile, yeah, but Lindsey couldn't let him win, could he. So he flashed him back an even wider grin and floored it.

So he never knew which of them had been the target as he saw the pale flash streak by inches from his face and suddenly Angel wasn’t keeping up with him anymore. Was falling back in the seat as the convertible skewed away and slowly, with the inevitability of the tide, slid over the curb toward the seedy warehouse wall that took the fender and dragged the car into its sudden, violent embrace.

Lindsey didn’t have time to think about it before his own foot slammed down on the brakes and he screeched around in a bootlegger’s turn toward the steelcrunch of Angel’s car. And he knew he’d just been driving fast, so why was he suddenly moving at nightmare slowness out of his own car to where Angel sprawled across the seat of his wreck, the shaft of the arrow completely out of place and ridiculous where it stuck out from Angel’s chest like the spike of a sundial.

Something about the strong smell of leaking gas and the flame-red runes on the arrow’s fletching made Lindsey uneasy, and then he had the heavy cold body in his arms--in his by God two hands--and was halfway back to his own car before the explosion hit them from behind.

Dazedly, Lindsey lifted his head and rubbed at his sore cheek to realize it was stuccoed with gravel where he’d slid facedown along the street, grit sticking where the lacerations had made his skin sticky with blood.

Wait. Angel? Lindsey got one arm under him and pushed up to where he could see, the world all flames and shadows and smoke that tried to blind him. There, was that him?

Angel wasn’t breathing. He’d been too late.

_No, wait,_ Lindsey thought slowly, _That isn’t right._

_Vampire._

_They don’t breathe, do they. Except to talk, and things like that._

Numb fingers didn’t want to tell him whether Angel had a pulse, but Lindsey’s mind finally cleared enough to know that the presence of a body and not a drift of ash meant that Angel was still alive. 

Or. Whatever.

But likely not for long. That arrow was all the way in. Angel’s face was skull-tight, his hands trying and failing to reach up to pull it out, fingers suddenly slack. And the spreading shadow under him smelled of copper and corruption.

Hell. Lindsey’d have traded his other hand to kill the bastard the other night, and his jaw tried to clench with the satisfaction of seeing Angel hurting. But this, there was no real pleasure in seeing the guy go down like this, not without Lindsey winning, Lindsey kicking his face in personally or giving back some of what the son of a bitch had done to Darla. This, this was just flat.

Call Angel’s partners--God knows he had their phone number--or just walk away and know the book was closed?

He looked at his own car and the firelight shifted just then, so he could make out the letters on the tattered sign on his own tailgate. **C PS SU K**. 

Crap. It hurt to laugh this hard with a chest full of smoke and oil, and whatthehell was his new freedom, his new life for anyway, if he couldn’t do what he damned well wanted with it.

And even now his new hand loved the feeling of leather against its palm as he hauled that limp cold body against him like a demanding lover, and ran his bloody palm over Angel’s slack mouth before he pulled that dark-haired head against his neck. A flash of sheer panic like a fall, then, like the mad rush of standing up to them all in the boardroom and telling them to fuck themselves.

But even now as he felt the cool flesh harden against his skin, all thrusting ridges, he knew Angel’d never do this if he had a choice.

So he used the only spur he had, and his new wonderhand grabbed the spell-runed arrow and tore it free.

And Angel’s mouth, screaming, did what the hells had made it for, soul or no soul. Pain like death’s claws as he felt the jagged fangs go in.

His hand--his wrist had been numb for a minute from the shock of Angel’s sword, back when the bastard took his hand. But this was razorbright pain from the beginning, cold as grief, hot as war. Needed.

He’d had dreams about how Darla’s bite would feel; dreams and nightmares. But he’d imagined it as a fall, a loss of self into fading dark. It wasn’t fair that Angel tearing him open should feel more like home than his beloved car, than the feel of guitar strings under his miracle fingers.

He wasn’t losing himself. He was more and more Lindsey and no one else, all of him distilled and drawn together and fed to the cold fire that burned him bright. Angel. 

Angel too was even more himself. With every wet, deadly swallow below his jaw, Lindsey became more aware of him: his faint scent, the feel of his hands and mouth that could be no one else’s, the purely personal sound of the breath as Angel inhaled Lindsey’s scent along with his blood, his life. The strength in his arms, the texture of his coat, the individual slash and draw and glut, pure Angel predator caught in hunger and near-death before the waking vampire could dilute himself with conscience and a soul.

Lindsey was dying, he knew that. He knew how deep his throat was torn, how fast the vein was bleeding out. But he wasn’t afraid after all, because this was his own, his personal death, as free as he’d made his life. Pure Lindsey, more and more Lindsey, and this had been his own choice after all those years of slavery. Choice was life.

And there was one last choice to make.

Hell, if Angel could get his soul back, so could he. Why give up now?

So it wasn’t fear, but curiosity and a depth of feeling for this very Angel Angel that made Lindsey lean in towards the tearing pain and grind his own teeth into Angel’s deathcold neck until he tasted something that burned like thick slow brandy and severed him from anything but darkness after all. Falling. Lindsey and Angel falling, together, gone.


End file.
